THE LAST OF US Video Game Actress Merle Dandridge To Reprise Her Role as Marlene in HBO Series
HBO’s upcoming series adaptation of the hit video game The Last of Us has added a new cast member. Actress Merle Dandridge is set to take on the role of Marlene in the series, and what’s cool about this casting is that Dandridge also voiced this character in both of the video games that have been made.
Marlene is the head of the Fireflies in the story, “a resistance movement struggling for freedom against an oppressive military regime.”
Dandridge will star alongside Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey, who have previously been cast in the series as Joel and Ellie. Gabriel Luna also stars in the film as Tommy, Joel’s younger brother, “a former soldier who hasn’t lost his sense of idealism and hope for a better world.”
The story “takes place twenty years after modern civilization has been destroyed. Joel, a hardened survivor, is hired to smuggle Ellie, a 14-year-old girl, out of an oppressive quarantine zone. What starts as a small job soon becomes a brutal, heartbreaking journey, as they both must traverse across the U.S. and depend on each other for survival.”
The Last of Us project is being developed by Craig Mazin, the creator of HBO’s acclaimed limited series Chernobyl. He wrote the show and is executive producing with Neil Druckmann, the writer and creative director of the game. The pilot for the project will be helmed by Russian filmmaker Kantemir Balagov, who directed the drama Beanpole.
It’s said that HBO is “aiming for a serious dramatic tone for the adaptation.” The rest of the production team includes Carolynn Strauss (Chernobyl) and Carter Swan along with Evan Wells of Naughty Dog and Asad Qizilbash from PlayStation Productions. Kantemir Balagov is directing the pilot episode of The Last Of Us.
Source: THR